The long, the very long way back

After a mechanic in Mexico City told us that the van’s engine would be alright we started our roadtrip back north in that rusty old van. The four of us, the van and a tiny company’s car. What annoyed us at first was about to become our greatest asset. Driving in two cars. After the first 100 km (about 60 Miles) our rusty, old van died down. At first we thought it simply overheated and changed the cooling water. However this continued in decreasing distances. 50 km. 20 km. 8 km. And from that point on every 2 km (about 1.2 miles).

Soon it got dark over the not so safe streets of Mexico. And the 400 km we wanted to manage that day, seemed far out of reach. Yet we didn’t know what to do and my still poor knowledge of that rusty, old vans engine wasn’t enough to figure out anything useful. With increasing darkness our frustration and yes our fear increased as well. We started to remember those horror stories about driving here at night and seeing an army of shadows moving over one field in the vast nowhere doing some mysterious business sure didn’t help

But what to do? We were in the middle of nothing. No place to check in, no chance to stop driving. So we kept driving. Or whatever you might call our freakin stop and go performance. At three in the morning we realized that we had no chance. Luckily we had an old rope, hardly thicker than what you use to repair old socks and flung it around some stable looking, rusty part of the old van. 160 km (about 100 miles) more to go. Roughly 2 feet behind that tiny car, over roads full of holes and obstacles. What a blast we had;)

Three hours later, sweaty, anxious and exhausted we reached our destination for that day. And we were so happy to end our roadtrip back north in that rusty old van. San Luis Potosí. At 6:00 in the morning we checked into our hostel (thank you again @Corazon de Xoconostle), swore never to drive at night ever again and dropped dead into bed…